Thumbelyna Quick Hands wrote:
The minors would have to be in sexually explicit activities and taped for it to be pornography. But because he in some way sexualized the activity and "portrayed" the minors in a sexual way, that's what the prosecutors are going for. Prosecutors generally throw every charge they can think of and in every degree, so from there it's easier to negotiate for a plea bargain.
Yeah. I seem to recall back awhile ago we had a discussion about anime-****, and the question of whether it violated child pornography laws came up. The general consensus was that the language of the law is kinda broad, but the key point was whether a depiction of an actual child was used in a sexual manner. By putting images of real children into the video, he's met that criteria. Since I don't know what words or video he injected in between the scenes of the kids, I can't say whether what he did actually crossed the line into "sexually explicit activity", but I can absolutely see both why the parents would be pissed about this and the DA might want to toss the whole book at the guy.
It was, at the very least, an incredibly moronic and insensitive thing to do. Assuming the other parts of the video weren't too bad, I don't think he should get nailed for child **** on this, but I'd expect a pretty major lawsuit. Using the images of minors in pretty much any capacity without parental permission is a big no-no. He could be sued. The bar where the video was shown could be sued. The school could be sued (and almost certainly will even though it's not their fault at all). He could be charged with a number of fraud charges at least as well for lying to the school about why he was taking the video of the kids in the first place.
Child **** charges aside, this guy's basically screwed himself pretty firmly.